Nell Irvin Painter

The missing Black history of upstate New York challenges the delusion of New York as a land of freedom far removed from the American original sin of slavery.

An abstract expressionist and master of collage, an intellectual and outspoken activist, Bearden evolved as much as his times did.

The first Africans who came to America in 1619 were not ‘enslaved’, they were indentured – and this is a crucial difference.